Really, can Obama get anything right in the Gulf?

Two? Two? Oh hell no two, Obama hesitated!

Taking into account that at this point, if Republicans thought they could get Americans to believe Barack Obama lit the gas himself on the Deepwater Horizon, they would…not to mention that we get it, Republicans (and many Democrats) hated the drilling moratorium and are especially hell-bent on proving it wasn’t necessary so they can get their “I told you so” on and argue against new regulations but really, why does the White House make this all so much easier for them?

“A U.S. House committee was forced to postpone a hearing on the findings of a federal investigation into the causes of the BP oil spill because the Obama administration suddenly refused to let investigators testify, the committee chairman said. The alleged silencing of the members of the joint Coast Guard and Interior Department investigative team comes in the wake of the sudden resignation of Interior’s lead investigator, Hammond resident David Dykes.

In a news release late Thursday afternoon, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, blasted the Obama Administration: “It took far too long for the final report to be issued and the Obama administration is now further delaying proper oversight by suddenly refusing to allow members of the investigation team to testify,” Hastings said in a statement.”

The long and short of the problem:

Two federal reports have come out of the Gulf.

President Barack Obama’s Oil Spill Commission, despite not having subpoena powers, took a look at the Deepwater Horizon and concluded the problems leading to the disaster were widespread and systemic, thus justifying new regulations and the drilling moratorium.

The BOEMRE and Coast Guard report, with subpoena power, took a look at the oil spill and concluded the problems were totally British Petroleum, and pretty much only British Petroleum which would seem to imply new regulations and the drilling moratorium were wholly unnecessary, oh, except that with the old regulations, BP dumped almost 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Meanwhile, the guy running the BOEMRE team, David Dykes reportedly had friction with Washington about the wording of the BOEMRE report, which led to both delays in the report’s release and his eventual resignation to take a job with Chevron.

So yeah, you can see where this is heading. Conspiracy runs so high in the Gulf right now that if Obama were asked what one plus one is, and he hesitated before answering, two…this would be accepted as certain proof the real answer is in fact three.

The Obama administration of course has an explanation for not providing the investigators to Hastings hearing, essentially that they never wanted front line investigators to testify, instead preferring people higher up in the investigation to do so. Certainly plausible, but not really satisfactory in the current politically charged atmosphere where Hastings, in response, is currently running the halls of Congress shouting, “The real answer is three, three, three!”

So now, we have another controversy.

Beautiful…as if we needed another. It would appear negotiations and rolling over is not the only thing Barack Obama excels at, he’s also quite adept at creating environments for the GOP to get their math wrong, ad nauseam and provide a distraction from who the the real culprit is here, the reason there are new regulations, the reason there was a temporary drilling moratorium, the reason these reports were even necessary in the first place…

In other words, what we should probably remember is where there’s smoke…